Last month, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named its class of 2022 “Genius” grant fellows — 25 recipients across academia, the arts, and sciences all of whom have demonstrated outstanding talent in their fields.

In our series, “The Genius Next Door,” we gathered three of the awardees who work and teach here in Massachusetts.

And, the daughter of one of New York’s most prominent rabbis has a secret that only her best friend knows. Plus, a successful website designer dreams of her own Jewish food show. Both of them are temporarily stymied by the reappearance of young loves gone wrong. Their stories are the heart of two new romance novels set during Hanukkah, the annual festival of lights. Romance novelists Stacey Agdern and Jean Meltzer are the authors of “Love and Latkes” and “The Matzah Ball” our December selections for “Bookmarked: The Under the Radar Book Club.”

Guests: 

Danna Freedman is a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an associate editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society. 

Melanie Matchett Wood is a mathematics professor at Harvard University studying pure math and number theory.

Loretta Ross is a reproductive justice and human rights activist, as well as a professor at Smith College. 

Jean Meltzer is the author of two romances; The Matzah Ball is her first. She studied dramatic writing at New York University’s Tisch. The Emmy award-winning former TV writer spent five years in rabbinical school before she started writing romance novels. “The Matzah Ball” will soon be a movie.